IDBTransaction

The IDBTransaction interface of the IndexedDB API provides a static, asynchronous transaction on a database using event handler attributes. All reading and writing of data is done within transactions. You actually use IDBDatabase to start transactions and IDBTransaction to set the mode of the transaction (e.g. is it readonly or readwrite), and access an IDBObjectStore to make a request. You can also use it to abort transactions.

Note that as of Firefox 40, IndexedDB transactions have relaxed durability guarantees to increase performance (see bug 1112702.) Previously in a readwrite transaction IDBTransaction.oncomplete was fired only when all data was guaranteed to have been flushed to disk. In Firefox 40+ the complete event is fired after the OS has been told to write the data but potentially before that data has actually been flushed to disk. The complete event may thus be delivered quicker than before, however, there exists a small chance that the entire transaction will be lost if the OS crashes or there is a loss of system power before the data is flushed to disk. Since such catastrophic events are rare most consumers should not need to concern themselves further.

If you must ensure durability for some reason (e.g. you're storing critical data that cannot be recomputed later) you can force a transaction to flush to disk before delivering the complete event by creating a transaction using the experimental (non-standard) readwriteflush mode (see IDBDatabase.transaction.

Note that transactions are started when the transaction is created, not when the first request is placed; for example consider this:

After the code is executed the object store should contain the value "2", since trans2 should run after trans1.

Transactions can fail for a fixed number of reasons, all of which (except the user agent crash) will trigger an abort callback:

Abort due to bad requests, e.g. trying to add() the same key twice, or put() with the same index key with a uniqueness constraint. This causes an error on the request, which can bubble up to an error on the transaction, which aborts the transaction. Can be prevented by using preventDefault() on the error event on the request.

Properties

Returns a DOMException indicating the type of error that occured when there is an unsuccessful transaction. This property is null if the transaction is not finished, is finished and successfully committed, or was aborted with IDBTransaction.abort function.

Fired when a request returns an error and the event bubbles up to the transaction object.
Also available via the onerror property.

Mode constants

Deprecated since Gecko 13 (Firefox 13 / Thunderbird 13 / SeaMonkey 2.10)This feature is no longer recommended. Though some browsers might still support it, it may have already been removed from the relevant web standards, may be in the process of being dropped, or may only be kept for compatibility purposes. Avoid using it, and update existing code if possible; see the compatibility table at the bottom of this page to guide your decision. Be aware that this feature may cease to work at any time.

These constants are no longer available — they were removed in Gecko 25. You should use the string constants directly instead. (bug 888598)

Allows any operation to be performed, including ones that delete and create object stores and indexes. This mode is for updating the version number of transactions that were started using the setVersion() method of IDBDatabase objects. Transactions of this mode cannot run concurrently with other transactions. Transactions in this mode are known as "upgrade transactions."

Even if these constants are now deprecated, you can still use them to provide backward compatibility if required (in Chrome the change was made in version 21). You should code defensively in case the object is not available anymore:

Example

In the following code snippet, we open a read/write transaction on our database and add some data to an object store. Note also the functions attached to transaction event handlers to report on the outcome of the transaction opening in the event of success or failure. For a full working example, see our To-do Notifications app (view example live.)